


Songs of a lost daughter of Zion

by hilbertastronaut



Category: Nibelungenlied
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:15:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22060276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilbertastronaut/pseuds/hilbertastronaut
Summary: Continuation of "Songs of the Prophetess' Disciple."
Kudos: 1





	1. Fugue

“Daz wære missetân.  
zwiu woldet ir verderben | einen álso schœnen lip?  
Ir muget noch mit êren | werden guotes mannes wîp.”  
\-- Nibelungenlied 1254

I had a cold that day. The Prophetess told me I would be little help, not to feel bad, to rest well -- not to stay in bed the next morning, but at a set time, to take my boxy little Volvo and a stack of cash (I never found out whose) and drive, not looking back. That morning, I drove through corn fields, flat to gently rolling, over rivers and hurled through a downtown loop, under and over, into slowly stretching prairie -- across hills of flint, through wind farms and cattle stench, and the silent reaches of infinite sky, before the rocks of the West parted the grass. I wept and chewed beef jerky and fiddled with the AM radio for a human voice, and asked myself how I would answer the state question: "Red or green?"

What I had _really_ wanted to do was get out of my car in west Kansas and start walking until I couldn't see a sign of human life (other than plowed dirt), and die -- even though I wouldn't have had the presence of mind to bring a means. I knew that the sky was Ouranos, Sire of the Aeon of Unbalance, He Who violated the Mother, but I saw so much of Him -- storm clouds, stretched long at sunset, and then a single blue eye, whose sightlessness bored into me and drove my bowels to worship what my head despised. This was His land, and thus my perfect hiding place.

No men dropped dead that day, or the next; no panic clogged the Interstate; so, I was the last one, as far as I knew. I had already wept. Zion lived as an idea, and Her bodies were free, except mine. It seemed tedious to develop an antinomian moral theology from this likely not singular event, so I elected to keep Her. I was a Lost Daughter of Zion -- the last lost daughter, if I wanted to alliterate.

This didn't stop me from gorging on chile relleno at some little truck stop, where I learned to answer the state question "Christmas." Blake wrote, "The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom." It didn't feel very wise but the Hatch burn warmed my stomach and threatened to bring me a smile. The waitress, proud of my empty plate, called me "hun," and I beamed back -- I, of the trained hands, the hands that would have known death. I would have set her free -- to keep waiting tables or whatever she wanted to do, but _free_ of _those_, over _there_, whose smell and hair and voice repelled, who called for coffee and winked and hoped for a ticket with a heart and a smiley face, from one whom the blue sky had already begun to leather. I paid cash for an early room at the motel next door, and slept.

In my dream, I saw her, the Mother -- not the rolling earth, but she whom the Prophetess called "Sister," and secretly (we all knew) "Beloved" -- she who taught us, patiently, to sing. I saw her chant a psalm to an empty room, and I knew she died alone. Everyone was alone at the end. I would be, too, but for now I slept fitfully through the gunshots of evening news and action movies filtered through the wall, and awoke to the knock of morning housekeeping. And I drove -- mountains to my right, shortgrass prairie all around, then through hills and "forests" of bushy piñon, up and down, and finally and down, down past the old capital (a desert suburb), past the emptiness of a state whose only industry came from its emptiness, and on to a broad smear over the desert, unworthy of the word "city." This was where I would begin my worldly career -- I had studied long years and endured long days and nights in the lab for the title "scientist," and it was coming to fruit now. Orientation was tomorrow; I had to unpack.


	2. Liminal scenes

Liminal scenes stick with me: The martyrdom of Stephen, the bomb's descent in Fahrenheit 451, "Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight" -- that knowledge of the too-nigh end which makes mortals prophets. She taught that "prophets don't tell the future; they interpret the present." Events made clear that I was no prophet, but I often imagined to myself the night before they Left: that for once, She and Her Voice slept in each other's arms, without fitful stirring, even as far lightning forked across the prairie.

I named my Sisters my own private names. The Prophetess was Hagen: grim foresight trusted by few but loyal to the end. Her Voice: Volker, who slew with song. I knew they were lovers and it never bothered me, even though it would have bothered either one to hear it. No one _saw_, but every look confessed it. They were the Two Sisters from the dawn of time for me, and they were baptized in blood. I kept an altar for them with two candles in a tray of sand, but had a Wiccan nonsense story ready for what visitors may come. (As if I would ever let the Horned God in!) I hadn't had to use it and it was getting rusty, which reminded me to write it down sometime in the highly legible diary, the one I kept on top of the nightstand next to my bed.

She taught us the art of self-examination once -- I mean, dredging emotions to discover hidden motivations. That never went well, but I had done enough of it these days to know that I wasn't just hoping to meet someone to share the Good News. The Sisters had their couples -- not just Hagen and Volker, the Wild One and her Bride -- and I was kept in reserve, the Last Chance. I had started to talk to the walls and was fearing they would answer back soon. But part of me wanted the madness -- only if I could burn as a meteor, once, and pass, wished-upon. To _know_ I was wished upon! this was the impossibility -- yet I, the Last Chance, have done the wishing and might yet receive in return.

Years of research projects, internships, and collaborations had born fruit: here I was, starting my career off in the desert with a car full of books and a stack of cash I didn't need but probably shouldn't keep on hand long. I had a blessing and a purpose -- a mission, even.

I saw her, in the coffee shop, the one where all the students aiming for hipness went. It had amazing bread pudding, which always embarrassed me a little because I enjoyed it so much that it left my fingers sticky -- so I had to make a mess with paper napkins everywhere and ice water trying to get it off so I could start typing again. I was busy doing that when I looked up and saw her goofy grin and the funny dimples in her round face. And that was it: no mysteries in her eyes, only curiosity that cared. She should have startled me but didn't, because her face hid nothing. But I was afraid, because I knew I could hide nothing before such a face.

I have to describe her in detail before I can continue. Besides the aforementioned round little face, she had speckled green eyes, a perky freckly nose in which a piercing wouldn't have looked out of place, and dyed-dark bobbed hair with pink ends. The top half looked like a black dress with pink skulls -- matched to her hair, which effort I admired (it's a dreadful pain to bleach and color like that).

"Hi!" she chirped. (Yes, I wrote that. It really did sound like a robin's morning song.) "[I hope you don't mind. ] What'cha studying?"

"I'm more cleaning up my fingers than studying."

"Ooo, bread pudding..."

"Yeah..." We both chuckled. I shoved everything off to the side and she put her chubby little elbows on the table.

It took me a second to realize I would have to introduce myself. The Prophetess never asked me my name, and Her Consort in a rare playful moment would call me "L.C." The way her mousy brown eyes sparkled when she said it made me understand what brought those two together.

"I'm Jude. I dunno, am I supposed to shake your hand? It's all sticky."

"I'm Emma. I wouldn't mind it so much if you stuck to me. Oh dear, did I say that?" She put her hands to her cheeks in a mock-horrified look, then realized the shock it gave me. (But I _did_ want to stick to her....)

I realized I need led to chuckle, so I did -- but I tried to give her a look that said I wouldn't mind very much at all. It was going to fail, as it always did, but I could always offer it up to the Goddess.  
"You look so serious there studying! I had to see what it was."  
"I'm just prepping for a chemistry experiment of sorts."  
"Oh, are you a TA? You have a student-y look about you."  
"I'm a postdoc, thank the Goddess. But I'm flattered you underaged me."  
She blushed for a second. It looked so funny against her pink hair that I had to chuckle again.   
"What is it?"  
"I just ..., sorry, ..." Now wasn't the time to cry! "Sorry, I had something in my eye."

"Hun, ... oh I'm doing the thing again!"

"What?"

"The thing where I try to be somebody's shrink! I promised myself I wouldn't do that again."

"But, ... you didn't say anything...."

"I was about to. Oh hun, I think you're cute but I need to stop myself before I try to save you, because you look like you need it."

I stared and probably even stopped breathing.

"You probably think I'm a freak." She looked genuinely concerned.

"... No."

"If I gave you my number, you would probably dust it for prints, then burn it."

"... Can I give you my number instead?"

"You're not just desperate for human connection, are you?"

"... Yes, but not just." I couldn't lie to that face. I wrote my cell phone number on a paper scrap and reached it to her.

"When you're better, I'll call you." She leaned over the table and kissed me on the forehead, then walked out, while I wondered how she was going to do that.


	3. Sorrow of the sunless sea

I wanted to cry that night, partly because someone lovely had paid attention to me and partly because I was alone again. I couldn't, of course. There were many things I could have done -- get drunk to feel something and beat my forehead on the floor before the altar, scream it out and make the neighbors knock on my door again, or dip into the knock-out pills I had started stocking (again). Instead, I wrapped a big feather bed around myself and sat in meditation until my knees hurt too much, then pushed the big bedding lump that was myself up against the wall and meditated some more.

"I am the sorrow of the sunless sea, dark and pure."

This was the purest sorrow, detached, because it wept for that which had never been. It wept, never touched, not for untouchedness. Sorrow could be joyful, because it was free of attachment to the unmanifest differentiated. My sorrow, still tainted, could be made free only by returning matter to the void, its original state.

These were things I believed and told myself, but I still thought of her and I did not care much to banish those thoughts any more. But I remembered the Prophetess' violet eyes as they fixed me that last day, the agony of untold horrors. They made me want to commit: either nail myself to the wall with a butcher knife, or get up and work. For the love of Her and Her Consort, I did the latter. But the scrap of paper stayed in my pocket and I would call her tomorrow, after the sorrow had washed through me and washed me through.


	4. True Believers

I first met the two of them -- my Hagen and my Volker -- through a classified ad. Written questions back and forth grew more pointed, until I passed some imperceptible threshold and they invited me to meet in person. It was in an empty classroom in the agricultural engineering building on the outskirts of campus. I did catch an agricultural aroma from the test farms as I crossed the south quad, past few students who mostly had beer on their mind that Friday afternoon. Peering through the door frame, I saw a pair sitting in the old-fashioned student desks, a bit too rigidly for their casual but color-coordinated sweats: one in the sky blue of a Fra Angelico, wisps of mousy brown hair sneaking out of her hood and great, soft, dark eyes; the other jet black, hands of ropy steel, and a face hard and grim.

"Welcome, Jude," said the sky-blue one. The other bored her violet eyes into my skull. I could see how she sat, a bit turned for quick access to what must have been a weapon at her side.

"You must be Volker." She nodded. "Why did you pick 'Jude' as my code name?"

"Jude was the patron saint of lost causes and last hopes. That's who you are -- our last hope, in case we don't succeed."

"Do you believe we won't succeed?" I asked.

"Together we will succeed. But most of us might escape our meat prisons first."

"Not until we take some others with us," I answered. Hagen's lips shifted a tiny bit, in what I later learned was a smile.

Much later, I asked myself why I immediately trusted them. Something about the way they sat -- chastely a little too close -- or the clarity in their eyes. Hagen's spoke: I have killed before; it is merely an obstacle. Her hands had scars; they knew the fight. Volker had an academic's look, a little too thin -- later I learned she had even filled out a bit -- but the way she looked at Hagen told me she would cast herself off a cliff at her Mistress' word. I had found true believers.

I saw them a few more times. Once, they told me to prepare for a ritual. I wondered, would I get to see them sky-clad? -- one all wiry, taut muscle, and the other's thin breast heaving in song? -- but they changed out of comfortable sweats into grand, silken vestments: Hagen, in black, a cape shot through with silver threads with a high collar, and Volker, in red-lined lapis, soft and Marian. She sang, filling the quiet classroom like a cathedral with her choir boy voice, and accompanied herself with a seven-stringed fiddle. The way her Mistress listened, utterly still, stirred a tear or two. Hagen then blessed my forehead with the lunar signs. "It won't be much longer," Volker said, as she cracked open a bottle of sherry afterwards. "You'll see us a time or two again." I asked to touch her cloak -- the lining was soft, the color of fresh blood. "We made it ourselves," she explained. "The Sisters poured their life into it." Whatever that meant, even though I wasn't much of a believer, I could feel the holiness in it.


End file.
